T.C. Williams Basketball

Titans Get Balanced Scoring
No. 18 T.C. Williams 57, Bowie 41
By B.J. Koubaroulis
Special to The Washington Post
Saturday, December 29, 2007; E08

Senior forward Anthony Winbush scored 11 points last night in T.C. Williams' 57-41 Wakefield Holiday Hoops tournament championship victory over Bowie -- good enough for what Titans Coach Ivan Thomas called an "off night."

Travis Berry, an explosive 6-foot-2 senior guard who was averaging 16.2 points per game, wasn't in the T.C. Williams starting lineup, and junior guard Edward Jenkins had just four points at halftime.

Without typical production from its top three players, No. 18 T.C. Williams relied on scoring from 10 Titans to extend its win streak to four and drop Bowie to 5-2.

Even with a new, more selfless approach, the Titans might be just as dangerous as last season's 25-4 squad that rode NCAA Division I prospects Mike Davis (Illinois) and Glenn Andrews (Tulsa) to a Northern Region title and a berth in the Virginia AAA tournament.

"These guys don't care who scores," Thomas said of the change in mentality. "They play together. They don't care who gets the glory. These guys are what made us good last year because we had these guys coming off the bench."

Through 29 games last winter, there were only three times that Davis (16.7 points per game) or Andrews (17.6 points per game) did not lead the Titans in scoring, and the tandem combined for 42 percent of the offense.

During its 6-1 start this season, T.C. Williams has used three starting lineups. In the Titans' 86-75 victory over Wise in the Wakefield tournament semifinals, four players scored in double figures.

"It makes the defense on the other side play a lot harder, because if they try to put the attention on us, we can swing it to somebody else and let them do the work," said Berry, who scored nine of his 10 points from behind the three-point line.

T.C. Williams's depth and versatility makes the Titans (6-1, 1-0 Patriot District) the Northern Region's most stable squad during a transition period that has seen nine coaching changes and resulted in a spin-cycle of upsets early this season.

"There's not just one person that has to score for this team," said Winbush, a 6-7 forward who is drawing recruiting interest from George Washington, College of Charleston and Appalachian State. "There's a lot of people that can get it done."

No. 18 T.C. Williams 57, Bowie 41
Holiday Hoops: In its fifth year, the Wakefield Holiday Hoops Tournament has had 24 different teams with four different champions. "I don't like to call up my Northern Region coaching buddies because we see them so much," Wakefield Coach Tony Bentley said. "We try to rotate different looks from different regions."
Three Quarters' Work: Bowie's Dwayne Jackson, a 6-7 guard-forward, scored 15 points in only three quarters, including a three-pointer that tied it at 21 with 1 minute 55 seconds left in the second quarter.